Co-Founder, Frontera Farmer Foundation; Proprietor, Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco; Producer and Co-Executive Creative Director, PBS television series Mexico, “One Plate at a Time”
Deann Bayless is one of the foremost women restaurateurs in the United States. Together with her husband, Rick Bayless, Deann opened the hugely successful Frontera Grill restaurant in Chicago in 1987, followed two years later by the equally revered Topolobampo. In 2007 Frontera Grill received the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Restaurant award. Experts on Mexican cuisine, Deann and Rick Bayless have published several acclaimed cookbooks on the subject, including Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico, Mexican Everyday, and the 2001 James Beard Foundation Award–winning Mexico: One Plate at a Time. In addition, the couple created and produced the long-running PBS television series Mexico One Plate at a Time. A member of Le Dames d’Escoffier and Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, Deann served on the latter’s board of directors from 1997 to 2005. Together with Rick and their restaurants’ staffs, she founded the Frontera Farmer Foundation, a non-profit organization that gives capital improvement grants to small local farmers
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Reception: 8:00 a.m.
Program: 8:30 a.m.
Adjourn: 9:30 a.m.
Deann Groen Bayless: Co-Founder, Frontera Farmer Foundation; Proprietor, Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco; Producer and Co-Executive Creative Director, PBS television series Mexico, One Plate at a Time
Deann Bayless is one of the foremost women restaurateurs in the United States. Together with her husband, Rick Bayless, Deann opened the hugely successful Frontera Grill, the equally revered Topolobampo restaurant and the exciting LEED certified XOCO cafe in Chicago. Experts on Mexican cuisine, Deann and Rick Bayless have published several acclaimed cookbooks on the subject and won the 2001 James Beard Foundation Award. A member of Le Dames d’Escoffier and Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, Deann served on the latter’s board of directors from 1997 to 2005. Together with Rick and their restaurants’ staffs, she also founded the Frontera Farmer Foundation, a non-profit organization that gives capital improvement grants to small local farmers.
Through the Frontera Farmer Foundation, Deann and Rick are helping to revolutionize our relationship with our food and food sources. The foundation’s mission is to attract support for small Midwestern farms, envisioning a year-round interchange between sustainable farmers and consumers, including farmers’ market patrons and chefs. Additionally, the foundation aims to leverage seasonal local agriculture as the basis for sustainable regional cuisine.
During her talk, Deann will speak about her work with Frontera Farmer Foundation, as well as the idea that “local agriculture” is about more than the farms beyond the city limits—it’s also about urban agriculture, a growing section of local food production. Guests will learn about how the Bayless’s restaurants produce many of their own greens in the Bayless Family Garden right here in Chicago and on their rooftop gardens. Deann will explain the importance of the expanding number of people turning their own little plots of urban soil into gardens and orchards, and how others are joining together to create community gardens right inside the city limits, changing the face of “local.” Deann will also discuss how their passion for providing fresh and local food lead them into the arena of “fast food.”
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